I just got Impulse, installed it and it instantly recognized my Stardock account and games, no problemo . Looks very good too and I do not need to tell Vista every time it is actually ok to start it, SINCE I JUST FRIGGIN CLICKED IT...

I'd like to see a completely unrelated Bioshock title. New character, new setting, no link to Ryan or Rapture.

I agree, but why call it Bioshock then? I do not like it when sequels kind of force a new story. If it relates to the earlier game, it needs to make some assumptions on how the player experienced that game, which may be completely different from how I saw it. Nope, better make a whole new one.

Besides with the Pirates of the Bioshock movies coming, they might be better off giving it a new name

I have just finished Persian Fire by Tom Holland. Pretty good, though might be a little history lite for more experienced readers. Has some nice views on the consequences for modern history. But highly recommended for people whose classical history is mostly based on 300 .

Now started in second Malazan book: Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson. His books are awesome, kind of combining (pulpish) sword and sorcery with epic tales like Robert Jordan or George Martin. Brilliant!

As mentioned earlier, there seems to be a tradeoff between longevity/complexity and reproducibility.

But why?

Well, this only holds true if you believe the evolutionary theories, the life of someone who has passed on their gene pool is worth nothing anymore on the big evolutionay scale. So in "normal", ie pre 20th century days, you see this in humans too. The average maximum age was somewhere between 30-40, right about when people start losing reproductive capacity. Now, with lethal infectious diseases mostly non-existent in modern western world, it appears that the natural degradation of the body occurs after the 40th year of life. Typical "modern" diseases, like cancer and Alzheimers, seem are good examples of this. Why? My guess would be that it is not worth it to invest in something that is worthless. Would you pay to rent a car for two weeks if you can reach your destination in one? It is hard to think like this on your own life, or any human life for that matter. These purely, hard biological explanations are hard to grasp, but are, in my opinion, the best one can come up with.

As mentioned earlier, there seems to be a tradeoff between longevity/complexity and reproducibility. I think the key concept is that there cannot be life without reproducibility. If you look at every organism, from the simplest bacteria to humans, they are all capable of reproduction. This is necessary to preserve a variable gene pool, or whatever you wanna call it, to deal with changing life conditions etc.

This concept has actually been shown in experiments with fruit flies. In these, long living fruit flies were selected and crossed with other long living fruit flies for several generations. Result? Life expectancy doubled. However, the amount of offspring decreased and sterility became more frequent.

There is actually a great deal of research on longevity, because of our ageing western world. Most deal with finding genes that are correlated with increased life span, and indeed there are some that slightly increase the chance of getting older (mostly genes involved in metabolism). In "simple" organisms lifespan can be increased with relatively simple, artificial ways. As of yet, in mammals the only that has worked is caloric restriction, ie eating over 50% less than you would usually do. This has not been confirmed for humans though, so do not try at home!